The Plunderer
by Saucery
Summary: In which Arthur is a geisha.


**THE PLUNDERER**

**- Chapter I -**

* * *

><p>When Arthur was fifteen years old, he was sold to a greeting-house. It was a modest little place, the trellises in its windows filled with imitation flowers instead of organic ones; not that Arthur would've recognized real flowers, anyway, seeing as how there <em>were<em> no flowers - not outside of Primus. It was kind of a miracle that Arthur had even managed to make it to the outskirts of the leisure district; by rights, he ought to have been working in the sewers, somewhere. The other kids at the orphanage had given him pitying glances, when he'd left, but he was damned grateful to have been picked up by Madam Mal. Better to sell your ass for a couple of years and be free for the rest of your life, right? Greeting-houses were the quickest way to pay the government back; most orphans spent their entire lives enslaved, working the dark mines or the gutters or the public urinals, cleaning up after the normal folk. Heck, washing the vomit off the street in front of a five-star hotel was probably the closest any of them would ever get to the food served _in_ that hotel.

Arthur had bigger plans for his life. He had a sharper mind, a finer face and a stronger will than anyone else at the orphanage. He was going to use his best years making a fortune, and then he was going to buy his freedom with it, and _then_, finally a free citizen, he was going to get a qualification and make his _own_ money. Buy a goddamn restaurant. Run a detective agency. _Anything_, so long as it was his own.

What Arthur hadn't expected was that the greeting-house would be so _boring_. He had to be trained for a whole year before his _mizuage_ - an old-fashioned Japanese term signifying his first contract with a customer and also, incidentally, the selling of his virginity _to_ said customer. It was a dull year, filled with etiquette lessons and tea ceremonies and music classes and wardrobe fittings and very (painfully) technical lectures on sexual techniques, in which the senior courtesans only curled their lush mouths and withheld anything remotely juicy or, well, _interesting_. And_okay_, Arthur _got_ that it wasn't supposed to be interesting; it would probably be revolting with a fat, middle-aged man or a saggy-breasted aunt, because it wasn't like attractive people normally needed to hire whores. But the act of sex itself was supposed to be interesting, divorced from who one was doing it _with_ - and Arthur was confident enough in his abilities of compartmentalization and dissociation that he was sure he'd be able to perform with the best of them. Years at an orphanage could either beat a boy into submission or into a kind of adamantine strength, and after being hammered - albeit not sexually - on that particular anvil, Arthur fancied himself forged of sterner stuff.

Hell, he was a far sight better than the dead-eyed little urchins that had quailed at the mere mention of a greeting-house. Arthur could _totally_peddle his ass. And get off doing it. He was damn well going to be _good_ at it, too, because Arthur was good at everything - be it mathematics or singing or research into the different forms of rope bondage and their varying cultural associations (Arthur's personal favorite was _nawa shibari_; he hoped he'd get to tie those knots around a client, someday, if not for sexual satisfaction then for the simple pleasure of being flawlessly_competent_, of mastering the sheer deftness and alacrity required by such a difficult technique). His instructors at the greeting-house had uniformly high opinions of him, and at each quarterly round-up, he never had less than stellar recommendations. Madam Mal read him his reports with a smile on her beautiful face. Etiquette: Matchless. Tea-serving: Graceful. Wine-tasting: Demure, yet displaying a subtle perceptiveness that invites the client to other, more sensual tastings. Wardrobe: Fluent in the language of fashion; elegant in the donning (or removing) of garments. Music: Has a low, pleasing voice and an uncannily accurate sense of pitch. Sexuality: Adopts a professional and unusually mature approach.

_Yes_. He was getting there. Now, all he needed was to hook a big client - someone filthy rich and, preferably, stupid - for his _mizuage_. It couldn't be (pun intended) _that_ hard.

* * *

><p>"Oh. My. God," said Yusuf. "You're the most prudish whore in existence."<p>

Arthur looked down at his waistcoat-and-tie combo. "They said I was too skinny to pull off anything more revealing."

"Revealing. _Revealing_, he says." Yusuf crossed his gleaming, oiled and very, _very_ bare legs. "Robert, do you see a problem, here?"

"I - I think he's fine. Good. You're both good." Part of Robert's beauty was his pallor, but he was looking a little _too_ pale, right now. The fact that he was the only one of them wearing the traditional kimono, with the red collar signifying virginity, didn't help. The red flared bloody and bright against the whiteness of Robert's throat; it would, Arthur thought, make the more wolfish clients want to _bite_. And those were, generally, the clients one was best counselled to avoid.

"Are you okay?" Arthur looked narrowly at his friend. "You look like you're hyperventilating."

"He's just about to get his ass plowed," said Yusuf, dryly. "Why would he be hyperventilating?"

Robert glared. "Shut up, Yusuf." He shuddered. "_God_, what if it's Eames? He's supposed to be a killer. I can't fuck a killer. What if he kills me?"

"Baby boy, if Eames buys you, you'll be rolling in it."

"In my grave, you mean."

"In your _bank vault_. Of _millions_."

"Eames isn't anything special," Arthur said. Like the other two, he'd been given comprehensive files on their potential clients. They were all having their _mizuage_ ceremonies held on the same day, as some kind of celebratory event designed to show off the house's newest acquisitions, and three of the biggest big-shots in town had been invited. "Ariadne and Browning are actually richer. And they run legitimate businesses."

Yusuf raised his eyebrows. "Eames is _hot_."

"Well," said Arthur, and blinked. "Yes." The attractiveness of a client was irrelevant to him, but he knew better than to say that out loud, because whenever he _did_, Yusuf looked at him like he was a crazy person. Just. For Arthur, it really was about the _work_, and sex was sex, while knowledge - improvement - were the trophies. Perfection in service was its own aestheticism; Arthur knew that his job was to find beauty _in himself_, and not in others.

Still, he had to admit that he was, comparatively, spoilt for choice. Browning was what Arthur might have expected, but both Eames and Ariadne were unusually - appealing - for their client base. For all that he'd thought attractive people wouldn't _normally_ need to hire whores, he'd realized upon reading their patrons' files that 'normal' didn't include business tycoons or mafiosos. Maybe they had too many pretty assassins sent out to seduce them, or something, and preferred buying sex from safe, law-abiding, vetted establishments.

Or maybe they just got bored.

"Mistress Ariadne is even lovelier," said Robert, "but. But I know we can't - we shouldn't _want_ - "

" - what we can't have?" Yusuf snorted. "Fuck that. Heh, literally. _I'm_ gunning for Ariadne. I've researched her preferences, and I know she likes - "

"Playfulness," Arthur ticked off on his fingers, because he'd done his reading, too. "Spontaneity. Youth."

"Yeah. Things _neither_ of you can offer."

"I'm young!" Robert looked affronted.

"But playful? C'mon." Yusuf got up and _stretched_, the light rippling along his limbs in obscene shimmers of gold. "You're _terrified_ half the time. And Arthur - his problem is he _isn't_ terrified. Of anything. Ever. You can't be playful if you don't know how to _scream_. If you don't know how to take a goddamn _tickle_, and - and _shriek_."

"Nothing you just said makes any sense to me," Arthur said, and Yusuf made a 'voila' gesture, like Arthur had just proven his point.

"There. Right _there_. You, my boy, are sealed so tight you're practically a _cork_. I'm not sure _who'll_ have enough patience to work you _open_, but, man, I _definitely_ don't want to be around when you pop."

Robert - unexpectedly - started snickering. "You make him sound like a pimple."

"I'm a _beautiful_ pimple," said Arthur, fucking _seriously_, and - yeah. Robert was all-out laughing, now. The tension had eased from his shoulders; the flush of laughter had warmed his skin, so that it no longer looked deathly pale against that red collar, or - or dangerously inviting. Dangerously _fragile_.

"Good job," said Yusuf, quietly, when the caretakers came in to escort Robert to his viewing.

"For what?" Arthur had folded his hands, in his lap, and was staring down at them. Concentrating on not clenching his fists - on not looking unacceptably nervous - on not looking - what had Yusuf said? - _terrified_.

"For getting Mister Neurosis to relax." Yusuf sat back down next to him, and nudged him with his thigh.

"Don't. You'll get oil on my trousers."

"And spoil your stiff-upper-lip look? Which _totally_ suits you, just saying."

"I'm told it'll make my patron want to unwrap me."

"Like the bestest, most prissy present _ever_?"

That - "Yes."

Yusuf grinned. "You'll do all right. It's kind of weird that all three of us are _boys_, but - we're lucky that all three of our guests _like_ boys. The question is, who'll like who?"

"Ariadne will absolutely pick you," said Arthur, with the confidence of knowing well-matched profiles when he saw them - especially after months of enlightening, if occasionally bizarre, reading on psychosexuality. Mal had a fascinating - and intimidating - collection of books. The ones on dreams were frankly frightening.

"I know," said Yusuf, and _relaxed_, which made Arthur realize, abruptly, that Yusuf had actually been tense. _Yusuf_.

"You'll be fine, too," said Arthur, because he had to.

Yusuf _smiled_. It was a strange smile, too affectionate to be rueful, and too rueful to be - precisely - affectionate, but.

It was a good smile. Maybe. For definitions of 'good' that included 'survivable'.

Arthur reached out to hold his hand.

And they just sat there, while the clients in the outer hall presumably admired Robert's grace and intellectual acumen, until finally, _finally_, the curtains were pushed aside.

"Arthur," said the caretaker at the door, a pleasant-faced woman wearing a simple servant's smock. "It's your turn."

Arthur stood. Took a breath. Took note of his hands - still unclenched.

"Good luck," said Yusuf, giving his fingers one last squeeze.

"I don't need it," said Arthur, and dug up a smirk. From somewhere.

No. Not from _somewhere_, but from that very spark inside of him, that very _strength_, that very resolve - that he'd get out of here, and out of any place that would try to keep him - that he would be the best, better than the best, and that, ultimately, he would be _free_.

He was _Arthur_, pipsqueak of the orphanage. Weird little kid. Outcast. (Whore.)

He didn't need luck.

He'd make his own.

* * *

><p><strong>to be continued.<strong>

Please review!


End file.
